All Points East 2026

The August 2026 instalment of my annual standing in a park watching noisy bands series.  PropUptheBar was off to Victoria Park for the Outbreak day at All Points East.
But before frazzling my brain and making my ears ring, a few pubs and bars were in order.

My day started with 'Spoons - a line I should just cut and paste for 50% of the blog posts.

Goldengrove (146-148 The Grove, Stratford, E15 1NS)
This time in the heart of Stratford, the pub with a respectable hanging basket display and pavement seating where you can watch the multi-lane road junction.
This is a relatively early JDW, opened in 1993 as the chain was expanding throughout the capital.  It has graced the Good Beer Guide in the past, but coffee or Carlsberg was the order of the day from a decent midday Sunday crowd

The 'Cowcatcher' American pale from East London Brewing Co. was my pick.
A bit flat and dull, probably because of the lack of use the hand pump was getting, but drinkable and who am I to complain at £2.40 a pint in London.
The outdoor space to the back and side of the Goldengrove looked good, although I opted to sit inside and watch the coffee machine break down and people complaining about dirty cutlery.

When I wasn't taking really poor pictures of carpets and knees, I was tenuously sketching out a mini-crawl of Stratford pubs.  But this was instantly kyboshed when I walked to the GBG-listed Old Black Bull and found it closed in contradiction to opening hours online.
So I set my sights on Hackney Wick instead, under-taking the West Ham walk...

Hackney Wick was once an area of derelict factories and auto repair shops that few folks would have cause to come to.  It's changed a bit.
I visited Crate when it first opened here in 2012 with the smart new Olympic buildings having been constructed across the other side of the canal.  Fourteen years later, with the West Ham crowds descending each matchday and general gentrification demanding old run down areas have brewery taps and cool bars, Hackney Wick is alive with colourful graffiti and hipster vibes.

Crate looked busy, but just around the corner, Howling Hops was still getting going on a Sunday afternoon, a handful of folks outside, inside practically empty.

Howling Hops Tank Bar (Unit 9 Queens Yard, White Post Lane, Hackney Wick, E9 5EN)
Howling Hops began life in the cellar of Hackney's marvellous Cock Tavern in 2012.  They soon outgrew that space and moved three years later to the 'Wick, setting up in an old brick warehouse. 
The main bar is 10-meters long, beer poured direct from a run of 10 tanks lining the back of it.

I picked the Howling Hops 'Shadow Boxer', a 5.1% brown ale, other options including a sour, a Dortmunder pilsner and several varieties of tropical and hoppy pale ales.
You ideally need lots of folks on those long benches.  So, a little bit lacking in atmosphere on this occasion, but I did have a superb beer and I had Cedric Im Brookes belting out 'Give Rasta Glory' in the background, so all was fine.

A short walk past the station took me to the current Good Beer Guide entry, the taproom for online retailers Beer Merchants.

Beer Merchants Tap (99 Wallis Road, Hackney Wick, E9 5LN)
Opened in 2018, this is real world manifestation of the 'great beer to your door' website store.  
Where you get the opportunity to bust your budget perusing fridges full of cans and bottles to take away or drink in, as well as having plenty of stunning draft options from 20 keg lines. There are a couple of handpumps, just one of these in action on my visit, serving Beak 'Luma' table beer. 

At £7.25 a pint for a 3.5% hazy pale, I'd rapidly increased in beer cost since my start in Spoons.  But the beer was good, served in decent condition, with a pick of the quiet benches inside the old warehouse space, or a seat in the sunny yard outside.
I somehow resisted the temptation of the 16% imperial stout on draft.

I'd heartily recommend a visit to Beer Merchants.  A great beer list.  Possibly best tackled when you don't have a day at a music festival ahead of you.

There are plenty of other spots to eat and drink here, but none quite as stand-out colourful as the Lord Napier.

The Lord Napier (25 White Post Lane, Hackney Wick, Homerton, E9 5EN)
Go back in time and this pub would have served as a local for the factory workers when this bit of the city was a hive of industry.  What would those drinkers think if they could be transported into the future: seeing it full of hip young folk, painted colourfully, featuring a karaoke room and roof garden, with weird beer that costs an-arm-and-a-leg?  Not a lot, probably.
Opened in 1868, it spent most of it's years as an Ind Coope house.  It sat boarded-up and un-loved from 1995 until it was resurrected in 2021.
A Five Points pump clip was turned around, so I opted for the local Neckstamper 'Bluffer' on keg.

I'm glad I paid the Lord Napier a visit, but suspect I may have liked it more in the 1980s with a Double Diamond in front of me.

The nearby pedestrian flyover took me across the A2 and into Victoria Park, skirting the barriers which made up the back of the music festival site.
Gate opening times seemed a little too close to the first bands of the day and I didn't fancy shuffling through a big queue, hence the short diversion to a trad pub in the side-streets.

The Eleanor Arms (460 Old Ford Road, Bow, E3 5JP)
Being one of the closest pubs to Victoria Park, this was doing a roaring trade with festival goers, the old-boy propping up the end of the bar eying the invasion of blokes in black band t-shirts with suspicion.
It's a cracking old two-roomed pub with pool table in the back and a few surviving period features, including some lovely wood panelling.

Sadly, the influx of customers didn't mean they were racing through the barrels of real ale.  I ordered some Tayto crisps and an East London Brewing Co. 'Foundation' (the alternative being a Southwark 'Mayflower').  In ropey condition, almost in as poor a form as the Aston Villa team being hammered by Brighton on TV.

Right...let's get into that festival...

Through the gates remarkably easily with no queue, no phone mishaps retrieving my ticket, and nothing setting off the metal detectors.
I headed straight into the big tent to watch San Francisco blackgaze metallers Deafheaven.  

You'll be wanting to see a picture of Liam's son Gene Gallagher playing one of the smaller stages...

And you'll be wanting to see my favourite t-shirt of the day (although with something in the region of 3,000 Deftones shirts, competition was thin on the ground)...

And you'll be wanting to see the beer list...
If you weren't put off this festival by my mention of 'blackcore metallers', you will be once you see the beverage prices.

Much less 'craft' than what I'd gotten used to at Wide Awake festival for the past couple of years.  Madri possibly not 'excepcional' enough to warrent costing 5p short of eight quid.
At least there were a couple of interesting alternatives, the 'Space Hops' by Beyond Belief the one that caught my eye.

But...hells bells...that frothy head of indeterminate size within a cardboard cup is irritating when handing over £8.25 for a 'pint'.
Talking of hells bells, I was off to watch punk-rockers Amyl & the Sniffers who've been credited with taking the baton from AC/DC as Australia's prino heavy-riffin' rabble-rousers.

Yet I enjoyed old favourites Idles more.
A band I've now seen three times - each and every one of them in Victoria Park.  I'm led to believe they do play in other places.

I didn't catch nearly as many bands as I intended to, the heat and the swirling dust blowing up from what was once grass making it less appealing to be racing from one end of the site to the other.
The day ended watching Deftones from a distance, then a march to Mile End station and the painful Oxford Tube bus trip home.  At which point the pre-festival pub crawl seemed like a much more foolhardy idea than it had done at 11am.

Wandering Up Whitehall

Brief midday central London pub explorations en-route to a CAMRA day out in Maida Vale.
Yes, an unusually-wise short post featuring three half-pints in Good Beer Guide-listed pubs all within a few minutes of Trafalgar Square.
The Oxford Tube bus whisked me from Headington to Marble Arch remarkably swiftly on this occasion. My Oxford colleagues who'd opted for the train were entangled with the United massive ("yelllllows!") on the station platform on their way to a crunch game at Portsmouth.  All trains delayed - so just me in the capital early doors.
I opted to head right to Whitehall, remembering that London looks pretty spectacular when the sun is shining. 

I hadn't walked this street in years.
It's busy with tourists, police vans watching diligently for wrong un's, the neo-classical governmental buildings magnificent, the cluster of pubs at the top of the street looking inviting. 
It was the Old Shades that I headed to, a 2026 Beer Guide entry that I really couldn't decide whether I'd visited before or not.

The Old Shades (37 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2BX)
This is a Grade II listed building, the true magnificence of which you need to be across the other side of the road to witness.  I wasn't about to try and stand in the middle of Whitehall waiting for a gap in traffic and pedestrians for the perfect pub picture.
The current narrow gothic building was built in 1898 by Treadwell & Martin.  Wedged between souvenir shop and Italian café, the Old Shades is bigger than it looks once you step in - stretching back some distance and widening after the first few tables by the window.

It looks like a Prop Up the Bar exclusive visit has been arranged to ensure pictures without pesky customers... 

The cask range on the long majestic bar counter featured six hand pumps, playing it safe with beers folks have heard of and the two locals.
"Prices reflect the very central location", notes the CAMRA website description.  Uh-oh.

A Southwark 'LPA' for me, a crisp pale ale with a bitter kick. 
£3.50 for the half pint.
With the pick of the tables, I slipped into the curved leather-upholstered corner seat underneath the portrait of Churchill.  And marvelled this magnificent pub...

So, where was everyone?
Some were drawn to outdoor tables, basking in the sunshine outside The Clarence.  Some were tempted by advertisements for steak & ale pies at the Greene King Silver Cross, 
But most were bothering the Guardsmen at Horse Guards Parade...

Crikey, that's a lot of tourists.
I continued to Trafalgar Square and snapped my own tourist shot of Nelson on his column and Charles I on his horse.

In an enviable position in the corner of the square was pub number 2.
This building was originally built for the Union bank, designed in Italianate style by F.W. Porter and opened in 1871.  Turned into a Scottish restaurant in 2005, Fullers took over and opened it as a pub in 2014.

The Admiralty (66 Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, London, WC2N 5DS)
Pre-noon drinking may be frowned upon in some quarters but it's all relative to what time you went to bed and what time you had breakfast, isn't it?
And it means you can make a fairly relaxed visit to The Admiralty before it gets inevitably rammed and the pickpockets begin their shifts.

'Jaipur' and 'ESB' perhaps a little stronger than I needed, Timothy Taylor 'Golden Best' lesser-seen than 'Landlord' or 'Boltmaker', but I steered towards the 'Pride'.  On reasonable, if not spectacular form with a price tag of £3.45 a half.
Most of the tables were adorned with 'reserved' signs, but I'd be long gone before "Vicky 1pm" arrived, hogging a large table with a prime view of the impressively decorated pub.
It's that mezzanine that is the icing on the cake...

You need to descend the spiral staircase to the basement to reach the loos.
That basement - refurbished after a big fire in 2022 - was a warren of booths within pillars and vaulted ceilings: the Gunwhale bar situated in the depths amongst nautical decor.

I had time for one more swift half before I needed to be elsewhere in the capital.
Plentiful options within easy reach of Trafalgar Square.  I decided to make a revisit to The Harp...after all, what right-minded soul could walk past this...

The Harp (47 Chandos Place, Charing Cross, London, WC2N 4HS)
Stained glass windows, budding flower basket display, outdoor vertical drinkers...
This is a central London pub with a deserved good reputation.
The first recorded mention of the pub was in 1805 when it was known as the 'Welsh Harp'.  It's a now a Fullers pub operating as a free house, providing a vastly different (and hard to pick from) range of cask than the Admiralty.
Ten hand pumps offering both familiar and more unusual ales.  I fancied veering to the dark side, so ordered the fantastic Downlands Brewery 'Oatmeal Stout'.

One day I'll do justice to the collection of classic central London pubs.
And find the most daunting steep staircase up or down to the WCs.
In the meantime, The Harp makes its case for an inclusion on that list - I wouldn't want to try taking these two steps at a time after five pints of beer...

But right now I was navigating them safely and leaving the heart of the city behind to catch the Bakerloo Line to Maida Vale.
More waffle and some half-decent pictures from there in the next post.

Richmond Pub Explorations

Mid-March provided the chance to join a 'Pub Research' trip to the affluent leafy surrounds of Richmond, West London, as organised by folks on CAMRA Discourse.
The day would serve up a mix of venues, pricey pints, a shrine to David Bowie, the Ted Lasso pub, and some fine company.
Here's the route for the day, starting at the bottom in the Old Ship...

My journey on the Oxford Tube was delayed due to being stuck a few hundred meters behind an accident on the M40 which saw the motorway closed for over an hour.
"Can we get out?" the students on the back seat asked the driver when he did the rounds updating passengers.  "No, we're on a motorway you daft buggers."
Perhaps they realised how close we were to Beaconsfield Spoons.

My plan for breakfast, a leisurely journey out west, perhaps an extra pre-noon pub, all slipped away as the traffic sat unmoving.  In the end it was surprising I made it from Notting Hill on the District Line to the first venue just 25-minutes past the midday meeting time.
Obviously I had no time to sort out the lighting in my shoddy pub picture...

The Old Ship (3 King Street, Richmond, TW9 1ND)
This town centre inn has been run by Young's since 1869, although existed as a pub for a fair few years prior to that.

Heading into the left-sided of the two ground floor bars, I grabbed a Twickenham 'Naked Ladies'.  The name and pump clip being frowned upon by some woke folk, despite it referring to a statue in the grounds of York House. 

 

The pub research crew numbered nine, myself included, having travelled from such exotic locations as Croydon, North Hampshire, Leicester, and Stafford.
The sun streamed through the windows with their stained glass designs; the fire crackled (perhaps unnecessarily on this warm day); the first pint went down a treat.

As it should at a steep £7.10.  
"Am I going to get a sub-£5 pint in Richmond?" I asked.
"You'll be lucky to get a sub-£6 pint," came the reply. 

Right - time to move on.  We walked along the side of Richmond Green before turning down Old Palace Lane, where the last building before reaching the Thames is The White Swan.

The White Swan (26 Old Palace Lane, Richmond, TW9 1PG)
As the road is a dead-end, this location is unspoilt by traffic - nicely tucked away in the quiet backstreets, their website suggesting we'd found "Richmond's best kept secret".
It was very foody, all tables inside filled with lunchtime winter menu trade.  Luckily for us the weather was glorious so having to sit on a sunny, leafy, enclosed terrace, with the trains rumbling by on the line behind us, was no hardship.
Cask ale on offer was Harvey's 'Sussex Best' or Surrey Hills 'Shere Drop'.
Despite having a 0.2% higher ABV, the Shere Drop was 60p cheaper than Harvey's.  So, being a penny-counting scrooge, of course I went for that.  On great form...NBSS 4.

Right...back to the Green and onward to the Cricketers in the corner.

Well, at least that was the plan.
By the time I'd finishing taking a picture, several of our group were bustling back out, declaring it not worth a stop for the Greene King house beer.  They made their way instead to the Prince's Head, just a couple of doors down.
Time for a quick half by myself? After all, I'd taken a photo.

The Cricketer's (24 The Green, Richmond, TW9 1LX)
Beers on the three wickets on the bar (I think I can get away with that when the pub's called the Cricketers) advertised a Tim Taylor 'Landlord' (coming soon), a house beer 'Cricketers Pale' (coming soon) and the mysterious 'Triple C'...

Hardy & Hanson's Bitter, I suspect.  3.9% ABV, served with a foaming head...brown and twiggy.
I could claim everyone missed the beer of the day, but I'd be fooling nobody.
What can I say about the pub?  Mostly dining custom, an ill-fitting soundtrack of dire modern pop, cricket bats hung from the wall.

And cricketing Players cigarette cards in the Gents...

Mr Daniels, Somerset, top-row, third-from-right, is my favourite for finding time for some casual in-game pipe smoking. 

I made short work of my Triple C and undertook the 30-second saunter to join the rest of the group in the Prince's Head.

The Prince's Head (28 The Green, Richmond, TW9 1LX)
Hang on a minute...it's the Ted Lasso pub!
Hence the scarf behind the bar from fictional AFC Richmond.  Masquerading as the Crown and Anchor in the TV show probably accounts for a fair bit of extra custom, the place being relatively busy on a Friday lunchtime, 'please wait to be seated' signs for the dining tables.
Here's the cask line-up, Pride warranting two pump clips...

A sensible half of 'ESB' for me.

We had a little further to walk to reach the next pub on the itinerary, apparently one of Richmond's oldest.

The Red Cow (59 Sheen Road, Richmond, TW9 1YJ)
It's also surely a contender for the closest tree to a pub award, The Red Cow is situated at the convergence of two roads, meaning hanging baskets to maintain on two sides.  I'll consider the Worple Way side to the 'back' due to the extraction duct, although our way in was through the open doors under the canopy.

This was a Young's house for many-a-year, but was sold to Punch in 2021, now with a community focus and dishing up food from a Cambodian kitchen.
Despite recent modernisations making the place bright and airy, the Red Cow retains a bit of pub heritage with the bar back.  Of Victorian origin, it's an impressive feature...

Real ales just out of the shot were Harvey's 'Sussex Best' or Timothy Taylor 'Boltmaker'.
A £5.90 pint of Sussex Best for me: well-kept and pleasantly enjoyable under the St Paddy's bunting.

Moving on, we made our way to the pub I was most looking forward to today - a real ale haven, recently a local branch CAMRA cider pub of the year, and once awarded a national cutest pub dog award.

The Mitre (20 St Mary's Grove, Richmond, TW9 1UY)

That's pub dog Rudi being stroked edge of picture.  He won his award aged 18-months, so is a much older fella now, providing us a good welcome.
The Mitre dates back to 1865 and - like the last and many other pubs in this area - was previously run by Young's.  It shut in 2012, reports suggesting it was in a quiet and sorry state, so fair play for the complete turn-around.  Fourteen hand pumps serving some lesser-seen beers and real cider, plus Neapolitan pizza seems to have done the job.

It was nice to see something a little different here, beers from Coley's, Darwin, Fownes, Wantsum, Burning Sky, Turning Point and Surrey Hills ('Shere Drop' being the house beer).

Based on it being a brewery I'd not previously encountered, I picked a half of the Coley's best bitter from Manchester.  And based on it being strong, hoppy and chocolatey, I picked a half of the Turning Point 'The Festive', an excellent flavoursome East India porter.

The clock ticked past 4pm and it was time to convince those members of the group who'd sunk into the leather cushioned armchairs that we needed to move on, heading north to our 6th (official) pub of the day.
Signage as we crossed the District Line by footbridge confirmed we were now about to enter North Richmond..

Could we Hope for a good pint in this neck of the woods?...

The Hope (115-117 Kew Road, Richmond, TW9 2PN)
Erm...no, not really.
In 2020 The Hope turned into the private members' Richmond Club.  That didn't last too long, as it has now been re-opened as a pub again, offering live music and comedy if you're here at the right time.  Interrogating Stafford Paul's encyclopaedic pub and brewery knowledge was entertainment enough for us.
Wadworth '6X' was the only beer available, taking over two pump clips...

That's an awful lot of flower displays on the bar.
And they've opted for a very dark grey paint job.
But never fear - because they have a Bowie shrine in the corner!!!

Now that's something you don't see everywhere.
More Bowie on a random wall as we trekked from The Hope back to the central hub of Richmond...

Where our final venue on the trip was directly next to the train station in a splendid wedge of a building...

The Railway Tavern (28/29 The Quadrant, Richmond, TW9 1DN)
This old hotel dates back to 1888, was previously called the South-Western, and had to endure a spell as O'Neill's.  Not to be confused with The Station Hotel which once stood across the road and featured early Rolling Stones gigs, although the Railway was used as a practice space for The Roosters, including a young Eric Clapton and Tom McGuinness, who'd go on to be a member of  Manfred Mann.
The pub was taken over by Nicholson's in 2024.
Hence the duller-than-they-used to-be Nicholson's range of ales: their St Austell brewed pale ale, Pride, or Adnam's two big hitters.

£3.30 procured me a half of 'Broadside'.
So - in the end - nothing topped the wicked price of that Twickenham beer in the first pub of the day.  And the Shere Drop in the second pub still stood out as my best beer of the day.

A big thanks to those who put the itinerary together and picked the pubs, ensuring I visited a few places that I may not have ventured to if left to my own devices.
And thank you for making the odd-bod from Oxford so welcome. 

Prop Up the Bar's Foolhardy Bonus Pub:
I wasn't quite ready to catch the tube back to central London, having spied a Beer Guide entry not too far away on the other side of the river.
Somewhere used in the Beatles film A Hard Days Night.

The Turks Head (28 Winchester Road, St. Margarets, TW1 1LF)
It's a bit of a street corner stunner, possibly looking its best lit up at dusk.
All pubs with turrets are ace. (Unproven Prop Up the Bar fact).

This Edwardian pub dates back to 1902 although it has been altered inside to make it open-plan, given a coat of gastro-blue paint, with added Chesterfield sofas in front of an unused fireplace.
What are those things on the ceiling?

The beer range included Fullers 'Pride' or the rugby-themed 'Prop Me Up' alongside Mondo 'Juliet' pale ale.
'Prop Me Up' seemed apt, considering the title I picked for this blog years ago. 
And appropriate as I would benefit from someone to prop me up by this point.
And where better to have a rugby beer, with Twickenham Stadium just down the road.

After a superb day, it was time to head home.
Then return to London for a different pub crawl the following day.